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Gan Kim Yong urged Singaporeans to save for retirement
June 27th, 2010 | Author: Your Correspondent
Don’t expect the state to look after you when you grow old – that is the hidden message behind PAP Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong’s speech at a CPF seminar yesterday.
Speaking to an audience comprising mostly of retirees, Mr Gan reiterated the importance of retirement planning to them.
“While the majority of Singaporeans correctly expected CPF to provide a modest standard of living in their retirement, 42 per cent assumed that their CPF monthly income would be equivalent to their last-drawn monthly salary. This shows that insufficient thought is being put into planning for retirement finances,” he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Times.
CPF has long ceased to be a reliable source of retirement funds for Singaporeans to tap on in their golden years as the bulk of it has been used to pay for banking loans for housing already.
Despite the failure of the CPF scheme as a sort of pension fund for Singaporeans, the PAP continues to raise the Minimum Sum to prevent Singaporeans from taking out their CPF.
Before 2003, all Singaporeans are allowed to withdraw their entire CPF in one lump sum upon reaching 55 years of age. Now, they have to keep a minimum sum of $117,000 in their CPF’s ordinary accounts before they can withdraw the excess money.
Though the majority of the population will not have the Minimum Sum in their CPF by the time they retire, Mr Gan continue to exhort Singaporeans to save enough for their twilight years “in the face of increasing longevity, declining fertility and an ageing population.”
However, the real wages of Singaporeans have not increased by much thanks to the relentless influx of cheap foreign labor while the annual inflation rate far outstrips the interest given by CPF.
While Singapore is the second richest country in Asia after Japan, its citizens enjoy few social welfare benefits from the PAP government.
Singaporeans are implored to work for as long as possible till they drop dead and die so that they will not become a burden to the state whose coffers are flushed with cash enabling its two sovereign wealth funds GIC and Temasek Holdings to splurge billions of dollars in overseas investments.
June 27th, 2010 | Author: Your Correspondent
Don’t expect the state to look after you when you grow old – that is the hidden message behind PAP Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong’s speech at a CPF seminar yesterday.
Speaking to an audience comprising mostly of retirees, Mr Gan reiterated the importance of retirement planning to them.
“While the majority of Singaporeans correctly expected CPF to provide a modest standard of living in their retirement, 42 per cent assumed that their CPF monthly income would be equivalent to their last-drawn monthly salary. This shows that insufficient thought is being put into planning for retirement finances,” he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Times.
CPF has long ceased to be a reliable source of retirement funds for Singaporeans to tap on in their golden years as the bulk of it has been used to pay for banking loans for housing already.
Despite the failure of the CPF scheme as a sort of pension fund for Singaporeans, the PAP continues to raise the Minimum Sum to prevent Singaporeans from taking out their CPF.
Before 2003, all Singaporeans are allowed to withdraw their entire CPF in one lump sum upon reaching 55 years of age. Now, they have to keep a minimum sum of $117,000 in their CPF’s ordinary accounts before they can withdraw the excess money.
Though the majority of the population will not have the Minimum Sum in their CPF by the time they retire, Mr Gan continue to exhort Singaporeans to save enough for their twilight years “in the face of increasing longevity, declining fertility and an ageing population.”
However, the real wages of Singaporeans have not increased by much thanks to the relentless influx of cheap foreign labor while the annual inflation rate far outstrips the interest given by CPF.
While Singapore is the second richest country in Asia after Japan, its citizens enjoy few social welfare benefits from the PAP government.
Singaporeans are implored to work for as long as possible till they drop dead and die so that they will not become a burden to the state whose coffers are flushed with cash enabling its two sovereign wealth funds GIC and Temasek Holdings to splurge billions of dollars in overseas investments.
